Things have changed a lot in the past couple years here, with Ed Reed, Troy Polamalu, and Charles Woodson.
I saw a PFF thing that had Reggie Nelson ranked really really high. Based on his actual performance.

Am curious to see what you guys have as the top 5 safeties of today.

Is Troy Polamalu still great? Or too beat up?
What about Dashon Goldson going to a new team?

I think the magnitude of the safety when Tuck was pressuring Tom Brady in the superbowl two years ago really set the tone for the rest of the game.

Guess it really depends how you rank em, I mean, are we ranking just based on last year or how they've produced over the last few seasons. I don't put much into PFF personally, so here's my list of maybe not the top 5, but 5 I respect and enjoy watching.

To me, Earl Thomas is by far and away the best FS in football. I want my FS playing the post and taking away the deep ball. Nobody in the league does it better than Earl.

Seattle runs a ton of single high looks, and it only works bc of Earl. Earl allows those CBs to play aggressive and not worry about getting beat over the top. Their Over scheme with the box safety being a hammer cannot work without Earl being good enough to cover the deepball by himself.

Earl makes that scheme work. He's the most important player in that defense.

Probably Byrd and Thomas. Weddle when used in that role. Goldson was good at it this past season when the 49ers did decide to leave him on an island, which wasn't .much since we naturally just like to play two safeties deep most of the time. You can still throw Reed in there too.